Can Google+ Compete

In a 180 switch from where we were a few years ago, it’s fairly quick to find a post or two about why Google absolutely can not beat Facebook. Googles version of the social site in Google+ is a more finely tuned machine at the outset than Facebook was. And as any who’ve been a part of Facebook from the early days can tell you, the site now isn’t even reminescent of what it used to be, and it’s still going through growing pains.

But going back to the point of Google+ can not beat Facebook (at their own game of course) I’d think it’s a little early to discount any players in the social space. At this point there are really only 2 social platforms that people work and focus on, Facebook and Twitter. Twitter of course delivering pint sized pearls of wisdom, 140 characters at a time. And Facebook a social behemoth with hundreds of millions of users, close to 750 million at last count, countless apps and means to wile away your hours. I find it a premature evaluation that Google+ has no chance in the social space, when some of it’s greatest strengths are what it openly lacks, time wasting apps.

Facebook is quick with the stats and saying they have 750 million ‘active’ users on the site, when in actuallity it’s probably closer to half of that. Even still, having nearly 400 million active users on your website, is a mighty hammer to hold up to any competitors which may look your way. By that same token, Google fields hundreds of millions of searches each day, just like Facebook has their millions of active users. Basing opinion upon the current beta testing population against the hundreds of millions of users on Facebook is as fair as comparing Facebooks search prowess versus Googles, they’re completely different animals.

Some articles I’ve come across have stated that Google screwed up their last social (mis)adventure when they threw Buzz at the public and made the erroneous error of automatically making everyones Gmail contact list public. And that the public is going to be gun shy about venturing into their newest social offering because of that. Well unless you’ve been living under a rock for the last few years, Google isn’t the only company to have privacy concerns. Facebook for a while was in the news weekly with new questions being posed to them via the FTC about the access to information and their heavy handed approach to social and automatically opting your account into applications you might be interested in. Anyone who has tried to navigate the Facebook privacy settings as well without a manual at their side can attest to the jungle of links and drop down boxes which offer no clear direction. Google+ currently, has much a simpler and potent philosophy, you’re private unless you want to be public. And if you want to be public, managing your settings is simple, you can share with everyone, only your friends and circles, or you can pick specific circles to share with.

Now the circle idea has been gaining some traction in that it’s actually quite simple to operate, provided you don’t do it with your eyes closed. The circles in Google+ would most easily be described as creating a group on Facebook and inviting people into that group. The difference however, is you control who is in your circles. You can create specific groups for yourself, in order to share in the way you like best. The option on Facebook currently is to create multiple groups and dissect your friends list and invite them one by one. Creating and adding to a circle is as easy as drag and drop from your friends list and you’re done. No waiting on those people who only login once or twice every couple of weeks and hope they’ve caught your group invite.

Currently Google+ is in a good place, it flows well, it’s easy to work with, and the hangout feature is a really neat idea. If they can get the bandwidth to work out properly for it so it doesn’t destroy monthly caps, I can see getting lots of use out of the feature. Think of it from a business perspective, face to face video/audio conference calls between all relevant parties, for the cost of your internet connection.